1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for supporting a reputation mechanism in a network, wherein said network includes one or more domains with one or more users being connected to said domains, one or more Identity Providers that manage identity information on behalf of said users, and at least one entity that functions as Web Service Consumer for said users.
Furthermore, the invention relates to a network including a reputation mechanism, said network comprises one or more domains with one or more users being connected to said domains, one or more Identity Providers that manage identity information on behalf of said users, and at least one entity that functions as Web Service Consumer for said users.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the field of the internet and the World Wide Web, electronic transactions are becoming everyday more and more important. Many daily tasks like going shopping, watching the news or calling friends can be performed by means of electronic transactions. But even more tedious ones like booking a flight or a hotel room, or enrolling at the university, among many others, have been simplified by using the internet.
However, as many more applications appear and become popular, also many security risks threaten its safe working. Due to their impersonal nature, electronic transactions suffer from several security deficiencies that have not been accurately solved yet and are, therefore, slowing down the extensive use of these very useful technologies by the society.
Service Providers from the same domain and even from different domains have to deal with these problems everyday. It is an enormous problem that an entity, in the following mentioned as Web Service Consumer (WSC) has when, in order to provide a requested service to a certain user, the Web Service Consumer needs to previously exchange some information with another entity, in the following mentioned as Web Service Provider (WSP). Currently, many domains carry out such a transaction in a secure way by means of a Service Level Agreement (SLA), as well as by the use of Authentication, Authorization and Accounting (AAA) frameworks. However, the problem is that a Service Level Agreement is not always available between every pair of domains. Moreover, the Service Level Agreement is not always easy to achieve and frequently has associated costs. Thus, many times no such agreement is in place to ensure the validity of the information provided by the other domain.